If you haven't heard, Valve Software and Vivendi Universal (thier publisher) have been go back and forth in court for a little while now... since 2002. It all started when the original Half Life started showing up in internet cafe's without the consent of Valve (Sierra is a division of Vivendi). This has not been settled and they even have a court date for this coming on October 8th.

Anyway, now for even more bad news. Vivendi has the option to hold onto the release of Half-Life 2 for at least 6 months after a final release candidate has been accepted. This means that the release of HL2 could be.... whenever. Apparently Valve has been telling everyone about a release date that Vivendi may not honor because they don't have to. The release date was never discussed with Vivendi.

That's where this story sits. No clue as to the fate of Half Life 2. We will one day see the game... but when that is, no one really knows just yet.